The German National Erasmus+ Agency invited us to attend the “High quality in school education mobility projects – a dialogue between coordinators of accredited mobility consortia, course providers and national agencies” Conference held in Cologne on 13-14 June 2022. The event was attended by about 60 people from various European countries from Iceland to Spain, from Ireland to Hungary. Parents International was invited for two reasons: to join the dialogue as a course provider, and to highlight the importance of engaging parents in education and Erasmus+ activities. The latter took the form of a workshop that we delivered with our collaboration partner, the European School Heads Association. The event also brought the possibility of new partnership and especially the potential to provide more trainings to education professionals, especially teachers and school leaders.

The event started with half a day of informal discussions in three groups: course providers (that we attended), representatives of school consortia participating at mobility activities, and national agencies. The event, and also our informal discussion group, was attended by representatives of the European Commission responsible for mobility programmes.

In the plenary session of the first day, the most interesting presentation was that of the new European School Education Platform that we are an official supporter of. There was another very relevant and very interactive plenary presentation on the challenges of quality in mobility programmes, especially trainings.

Our joint workshop with ESHA’s Director Petra van Haren was entitled Collaborative school leadership and the role of parent engagement in projects. After a first round of discussion and participants’ sharing their experiences, both organisations made a brief presentation that was further discussed in the workshop. Discussions were so much engaging that they continued into coffee break and the next session. Apart from our usual arguments for parental engagement, we have raised and discussed the issue of the often discontinued offer of trainings developed in Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships, and we also provided our own practice of offering such trainings as an inspiration.